DOGE Caucus Targets USPS Electric Truck Contract

Yahoo

17-03-2025

US Senate DOGE Caucus members have introduced a bill that seeks to cancel $3 billion in Inflation Reduction Act funding for EV contract for the USPS.
The Postal Service had adopted an incremental approach to phasing in electric models into its next-gen fleet, which will eventually replace the decades-old Grumman mail delivery vans.
The effort to electrify the USPS fleet has faced criticism even from EV supporters, who point out its slow and piecemeal pace as well as high costs.
The plans of the United States Postal Service to phase in EVs into its fleet over an extended period of time, first announced in 2021, did not exactly overwhelm ZEV supporters with excitement.
The incremental approach of the USPS envisioned replacing some of its vintage Grumman delivery vehicles with a newly designed but still internal-combustion-engined Oshkosh delivery vehicle that could be converted to EV power at some point in the future, along with purchases of off-the-shelf EVs from more familiar automakers as charging infrastructure permitted.
Even this admittedly modest plan saw a measured if not glacial rollout, with the USPS opening the first set of charging stations only in January 2024 at an Atlanta depot.
The launch of the charging stations was merely the first step of a 10-year plan, dubbed Delivering for America, that would see some off-the-shelf EVs including the Ford e-Transit along with conventionally powered and electric Oshkosh Next Generation Delivery Vehicles (NGDVs).
Now, even these incremental efforts are facing scrutiny from lawmakers aligned with the new administration's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
US Senate DOGE Caucus Chair Joni Ernst (R-IA) and DOGE Subcommittee Congressman Michael Cloud (R-TX) have introduced a bill, dubbed the Return to Sender Act, that proposes to terminate the $3 billion that had been allotted under the Biden administration's Inflation Reduction Act to electrify a part of the USPS fleet, citing delays and other issues in the program.
"The Biden administration's so-called Inflation Reduction Act funneled billions into a failed USPS EV project that has delivered nothing but delays, defective trucks, and skyrocketing costs," said Rep. Cloud.
"Three years later, taxpayers are still waiting while the Postal Service refuses to provide basic transparency on where the money went. The Return to Sender Act takes back the $3 billion in taxpayer money that has been wasted in this project."
In 2022 the USPS issued an estimate of just how its fleet electrification efforts would unfold throughout the decade, indicating that some 45,000 of its 60,000 NGDVs would be ordered as electric models, with off-the-shelf models from Ford and others contributing another 21,000 vehicles, though with the caveat "depending on market availability."
In all, some 66,000 EVs were slated to join the USPS by 2028, electrifying just a portion of the service's fleet in a best-case scenario.
At the time of the announcement of the 66,000 EV plan, the USPS still hedged the entire effort on eventual "operational feasibility," despite the cost of the entire investment estimated to hit $9.6 billion with $3 billion of that to be contributed by the Inflation Reduction Act.
A large chunk of that investment would have also included thousands of EV chargers sourced from ChargePoint, Siemens, and Blink."The order needs to be canceled with the unspent money returned to sender, the taxpayers," Sen. Ernst said in a statement. "I am defunding this billion-dollar boondoggle to stamp out waste in Washington."
The Trump administration, for its part, has made no secret of its contempt for the various EV efforts that were part of the Inflation Reduction Act, with President Trump issuing an executive order late in January to freeze funding disbursements under the IRA.
However, it remains to be seen whether this legislative effort, and other parallel efforts, can cancel the existing contracts between the USPS and Oshkosh, as well as other manufacturers given that the fleet of Grumman LLVs has needed a replacement for some time.
The NGDVs, which are slowly making their way into postal fleets, represent a significant leap in comfort and functionality over the old Grumman vehicles, as do the larger vans sourced from Ford and others.
Should the USPS have adopted a faster track to electrify its fleet, if at all, or does the Postal Service have higher priorities? Let us know what you think in the comments below.